rhodesian history

The Journal of The Central Africa Historical Association

Volume 9 1978

N. M. N. RALUSHAI Traditions concerning Luvhimbi and the Mbedzi

I. C. LAMBA British commerce as an anti- device in

J. M. MACKENZIE

I. R. HANCOCK Capricorn Africa Society

H. H. PATEL Asian political activity in

Notes, Documents and Revisions

Essay Review

Reviews

Bibliography

_ RHODESIAN HISTORY The Journal of the Central Africa Historical Association Edited by R. S. Roberts and P. R. Warhurst

Volume 9 1978

Further traditions concerning Luvhimbi and the Mbedzi. N. M. N. RALUSHAI ...... 1 British commerce as an anti-slavery device in Malawi in the 1870s and 1880s: A study in miscalculated strategy. I. C. LAMBA — 13

Southern Rhodesia and Responsible Government. J. M. MACKENZIE ...... 23 The Capricorn Africa Society in . I. R. HANCOCK ...... 41 Asian political activity in Rhodesia from the Second World War to 1972. H. H. PATEL 63

NOTES, DOCUMENTS AND REVISIONS Cecil Rhodes: Some documents and reflections. G. SHEPPERSON 83 Firearms as a factor in Manyika politics from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century. H. H. K. BHILA ______91 A difference of opinion in the Colonial Office, 1893. S. B. STEVENSON _ _ _ _ ...... __ 99

ESSAY REVIEW The Tonga and the anthropologists. T. I. MATTHEWS_ __ 115

REVIEWS __ „ _ _ ...... 123 R. BLAKE, A History of Rhodesia by P. R. Warhurst; A. F. ISAAC- MAN, The Tradition of Resistance in by P. R. Warhurst; M. GELFAND, A Non-Racial Island of Learning: A History of the University College of Rhodesia by T. O. Ranger; J. P. L. WALLIS and F. R. BRADLOW, Thomas Baines by R. S. Roberts; C. BLACK, The Legend of Lomagurtdi by R. S. Roberts; E. WASON, Banned by R. E. M. Songore.

BIBLIOGRAPHY io o

NEWS 131 Rhodesian History (1978), IX.

BRITISH COMMERCE AS AN ANTI-SLAVERY DEVICE IN MALAWI IN THE 1870s AND 1880s: A STUDY IN MISCALCULATED STRATEGY*

I. C. L amba , Chancellor College

D u r in g t h e n in e t e e n t h cantury the Industrial Revolution in Britain, as in other parts of Europe, intensified the search for sources of raw materials and markets abroad. The visit to Central Africa in 1859 of Livingstone and John Kirk led to the conviction that Malawi offered such economic opportuni­ ties and potential;' Livingstone in fact saw the British as destined for 'the largest [commercial] stake in the African Continent’.2 The British, however, misread the Malawian situation with the result that their commercial strate­ gies in the region were equally miscalculated. In Central Africa, the function of British commerce, as advocated by Livingstone, was to go beyond mere commercial dealings and become the necessary means for the destruction of the slave trade. As in many parts of Africa, a complex situation existed in Malawi, Swahili commerce posed the greatest challenge to British economic enterprise; and since Swahili Arab commerce took much of its strength from the slave trade, it was only prud­ ent for the British to destroy the slave trade as a means of weakening the Swahili Arab commercial dominance. In pursuance of her official anti­ slavery policy, Britain willingly made available financial aid, albeit small, to any private British exploration abroad likely to lead eventually to commer­ cial expansion overseas under the banner of ‘anti-slavery crusaders’. It was in this spirit that the British proclaimed a subtle negrophile humanitarianism, the ultimate beneficiary of which would be British capitalists. However, the British anti-slavery commercial strategy in Malawi never succeeded in oust­ ing the Arab factor. To the capitalist humanitarians British commerce stood as one of the most subtle and hopeful anti-slavery devices; for, while Christianity re­ presented an alien moral and religious concept to the Africans, trade was an

* Research for this paper was generously funded by the Canadian Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan. 1 J. Kirk, ‘Report on the natural products and capabilities of the Shire and lower Zambesi Valleys’, Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society (1861-2), VI, O.S. 25-35. 2 D. and C. Livingstone, Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tribu­ taries, and of the Discovery of the Lakes Chiluia and Nyasa 1858-1864 (New York, Harper Brothers, 1866), 8.

13 14 COMMERCE AS AN ANTI-SLAVERY DEVICE old occupation among the and Yao and so likely to be accepted as a continuation of the Africans’ commercial life. Moreover, British enterprise in this form was regarded by the humanitarians as a potent instrument for social change capable of striking at the root of the slave traffic — uncivilized life. The yardstick of African society’s progress towards civilization was the amount of the European goods purchased. The value of trade was to stimulate the African’s mind through commercial intercourse and the encouragement of an efficient division of labour;3 and the British after displacing the would, so it was argued, ultimately unite the Africans against the competi­ tive slave trade. Common in nineteenth-century Britain, this pattern of thinking originated from the belief that the Africans’ own trade was of an atavistic and disrup­ tive nature which promoted divisiveness and inhibited any feelings of inter­ dependence between tribes. This alleged isolation was thought to be responsi­ ble for tribal animosities that created fertile conditions for the growth of the slave trade. British theorists never associated the slave trade with ethnic and class conflicts which often set one African group or family against another. British commerce, with its transforming power as a ‘social’ agency would turn Africans ‘into a body corporate of nations, no one member of which can suffer without the other suffering with it’.4 A ready and eager Afri­ can acceptance of legitimate commerce was generally assumed in humanitarian circles and no consideration was given to any adverse effects that the suppres­ sion of the slave trade or the introduction of ‘legitimate’ commerce might have upon African life. The proponents of legitimate trade attacked the in­ dependence of the traditional socio-political systems where slave holding represented an important symbol of status and power. For the chiefs to em­ brace a commerce demanding renunciation of ‘slavery’, however, was tanta­ mount to destroying their own social foundations. Little did the British understand the operation of slavery in African society. For example, domestic slavery and its closely allied clientage system represented devices among some African peoples for absorbing, assimilating and socializing other ethnic groups or their remnants into social cohesion. It thus also had the positive effect of turning Africans into what Livingstone called ‘a body corporate’. In sum, African slavery and the slave trade posed the greatest obstacle and challenge to any planned British commercial imperialism in the continent. The advocacy of British commerce in Malawi embraced a wide variety of interests ranging from to adventurer. To the ,

a Sec, for example, F. Holmwood, Introduction to J. F. Elton, Travels and Re­ searches among the Lakes and Mountains of Eastern Africa, ed. H. B. CotteriU (London, J. Murray, 1879), 19-20: ‘there is a trait in the character of Africans generally which has done much to keep them in a universal state of barbarism . . . it is a disinclination to any settled employment no matter what the incentive to labour . . . a consequence of generations of slavery’. * Livingstone, Narrative of an Expedition, 28. 1. C. LAMBA .13

since their arrival in 1875, it was clear from the Africans’ religious and com­ mercial background that material wants preceded Christian spiritual needs. This assessment was shared by both Stewart and Laws of Livingstonia;5 and the missionaries had to meet the Africans’ material needs. In order that Christianity be propagated, missionaries in fact became the strongest ad­ vocates of British commercial imperialism. African chiefs could be won to Christendom only after they had seen the material benefits likely to accrue from the new faith; and the support of the chiefs was crucial to the success of any foreign economic enterprise. Stewart believed in the inseparability of religion and secular commerce. In a long and significant letter to the Livingstonia Committee in , appealing for a trading company, Stewart emphasized his stand: No sermons or daily lectures on the benefits of industry and the sin of idleness would accomplish one twentieth part of the good that would be achieved by a simple depot of goods here [Malawi], where people could get what they want in return for what they have . . . What is the use of talking to a man in this state [of poverty] about things utterly beyond his comprehension at first; and assuring him that you are his friend, and that you seek his good, when you cannot supply him with the very simplest means of raising him above the state in which you find him? If a man is naked . . . give him calico and not words.6 Ironic yet pragmatic, such an argument had its base beyond mere commer­ cial considerations of the African’s welfare. Quite a significant factor was the growing Arab and Yao commercial activity which at this time seriously threatened British attempts to spread their influence. The continued African response to Arab trade was evident in 1876, when the Yao at the Lake openly declared: ‘We can get anything from the Arabs we want. We can get nothing from you. They are our friends even though they sometimes take away our people.’7 Also of course, there was the Portuguese trade, active south of the Swahili Arab commercial zone. The Arab popularity in the 1870s stemmed from not only their posses­ sion and distribution of guns and gunpowder but also their trade goods. To displace the Arabs and win the Africans, the British logically needed to pro­ vide the African market with the same popular Arab goods, such as hatchets, knives, cloth, looking-glasses and beads. On the purely trading side, the British commercial strategy was well planned at a time when relations be­ tween Malawians and Arabs very rarely rose above the commercial level.

s J. Stewart, Dawn in the Dark Continent of Africa and Its Missions (New York, Young Peoples’ Missionary Movement, 1902), 217-18. s Stewart in the Free Church of Monthly Record (May 1873), 110-13 quoted in H. W. Macmillan, ‘A Sketch of the African Lakes Company 1878-93’ (Univ. of Malawi, Chancellor Coll., Seminar Paper, 1968), 2. 7 Stewart in Glasgow Herald, 11 Nov. 1876, cited in Macmillan, ‘A Sketch of the African Lakes Company’,2. 16 COMMERCE AS AN ANTI-SLAVERY DEVICE When Young approached the Yao chief Mponda about the traffic, Mponda’s reaction was a categorical statement: he sold slaves to procure goods ob­ tainable only in this manner.8 In this situation H. B. Cotterill, a son of the Bishop of Edinburgh, antici­ pating great profits, brought into Malawi a steel boat and Manchester goods worth £500 for the purchase of African products like ivory and cotton. Like most British traders, Cotterill was convinced of the fantastic commercial potential of Malawi, particularly in the region of the Lake. The prosperity of the Swahili Arab and Yao trade in the area seemed to confirm the likely positive commercial advantage to British trade in displacing the rivals. However, the problems slowly became obvious: the Portuguese control of the , the main route of access to the region, which entailed pro­ hibitive Portuguese customs; the obstacle course of the journey from the Murchison Cataracts to the navigable portion of the Upper Shire, and the active Swahili traffic. Although it cannot be said with certainty that the slave trade constituted the larger part of their rivals’ profits, the British tactics, aimed at breaking the commercial hegemony of the Portuguese, Arabs and Yao, involved treating all three as slave traders. Cotterill’s venture ended in a fiasco but J. F. Elton, the British Consul at Mozambique, and Captain Verney Cameron,® the famous transafrican explorer, never faltered in their strong belief of commercial prospects in Malawi along the lines of Stewart’s suggestions. Legitimate commerce in Malawi was strongly identified with Protestant missionary goals. Determined to make Malawi a Protestant rather than a Catholic stronghold, British commerce would have confronted any Portu­ guese competition even in the absence of any likelihood of substantial pro­ fits, as such a venture represented largely a ‘humanitarian’ endeavour. Thus although the formation in 1878 of the African Lakes Company, initially named the Livingstonia Central Africa Company, coincided with the general British capitalist activity in Africa, the Company was an organization prodded into existence by missionaries to operate as a commercial extension of Livingstonia Mission in an attempt to make the British presence felt locally both on the commercial and spiritual fronts. With a slender capital of £20 000 from a group of Glasgow merchants and under the chairmanship of James Stevenson, the Livingstonia Mission Convener, the Lakes Company was for fifteen years the sole commercial en­ terprise of its kind in Malawi. The Company’s objectives aimed at developing British trade and exploiting the country’s resources were stated as follows: *

* E. D. Young, Nyasa: A Journal of Adventure (London, J. Murray, 1877), 77. s See V. L. Cameron, ‘Trade in Central Africa: Present and future’, The Journal of the Royal Society of Arts (1877), XXV, 162-71. I. C. LAM B A 17

The navigation of the Rivers and Lakes of Central Africa, and especially those rivers and lakes, which communicate with the Indian Ocean by the River Zambezi and of the River Zambezi itself, with a view to develop the trade and resources of the country and to encourage legitimate traffic among the natives.10 * Granted the use of the Livingstonia steamer, Ilala, and under the joint managership of John and Frederick Moir, the Company rapidly extended its commercial activities from its headquarters in Blantyre to Karonga in the north, with stores operating at Blantyre, Livingstonia (Cape Maclear) and Karonga itself. By the end of 1879 the Company’s plans included expansion to Lake and the launching of a trade ship on the lake to serve the London Missionary Society settled at Ujiji in 1876" and James Steven­ son personally contributed £4 000 for road construction between Lakes Malawi and Tanganyika to facilitate trading stations from across the corridor down to the Shire River in order to block the Arab routes and intercept ivory trade from the west. The Lakes Company strongly believed in a strategy which would not only cut off the Arab dominated coast-bound traffic but also create for itself a brisk ivory trade with the western tribes. This awkwardly expensive plan to obstruct slave routes, however, in­ dicated British misjudgement of the practical aspects of the slave trade. For example, the alleged inseparability of the ivory and the slave trade, a com­ mon British misconception, led to the unrealistic conclusion that cutting off the flow of ivory across the corridor and at the south end of would effectively destroy the slave trade: ‘By [the British] purchasing ivory . . . the slave trade would be rendered unprofitable, for it is only by the ivory being carried by the slaves that the latter [slaves] do not eat up the profits of a trip’.'2 That the slave trade partially originated in the caravan trade is known only too well except that it is now established that many ivory porters were paid labour. Therefore, undue emphasis on this view led to the false conclusion that exhaustion of ivory in the interior would auto­ matically doom the slave trade. The evidence available18 fails to support this reasoning, for ivory and slaves had been detached from each other at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In fact, from the 1840s, the Yao slave forays, now concentrated east of the Lake,14 * bore no relationship to ivory. On the contrary extensive ivory purchasing by the British leading to

io Cited in Macmillan, ‘A Sketch of the African Lakes Company’, 5. it See N. Bennett, Introduction to A. J. Swann, Fighting the Slave Hunters in Central Africa (London, Frank Cass, Reprint, 1969), esp. vii-xi. i* Livingstone, Narrative of an Expedition, 140. is In 1866 all the slaves Livingstone met between the east coast and Lake Malawi carried slave sticks and not ivory, The Last Journal of Livingstone in Central Africa. ed. H. Waller (New York, Harper, 1875), 1-183. 14 Great Britain, Correspondence with the British Commissioners . . . and from British Naval Officers Relating to the Slave Trade . . . 1865, 175, Playfair to Russell, 30 May 1865 (H.C. 1866, lxxv, 1). 18 COMMERCE AS AN ANTI-SLAVERY DEVICE the depletion of the commodity forced many African tribes, including the Yao, into the slave trade. The common failure on the part of the British to distinguish between slave and ivory caravans led to gross strategic miscalculations. To most of the British and indeed the Lakes Company, caravans, always associated with evil Arab commerce, were invariably ‘black and white ivory’. No pro­ per distinction — and possibly calculatedly so — was made between slave and ivory caravans, or between slave and paid ivory porters. However, as Consul Churchill at observed, it was an error to think that the slaves brought down to the coast are made to carry ivory. They are brought down in gangs chained to­ gether lest they should run away, and they are so poorly fed on the way that they can scarcely carry their weight when they reach Kilwa.'* Slaves meant for the market never carried ivory which in any case had its own depot at the coast.’8 That ivory porterage was a specialized task was illustrated by Tippu Tip, the great Arab trader in Katanga, who preferred hired Nyamwezi porters to emaciated'7 slaves for hauling his heavy ivory tusks of sixty pounds each to the coast. To the Nyamwezi, porterage re­ presented a prestigious occupation which elevated a man’s social status. Admittedly, selling both the ivory tusk and its porter was a temptation, but hired porters rarely ended up in coastal slave barracoons. The effective­ ness of the African Lakes Company’s plan to intercept slave exports by purchasing the ivory was only a myth perpetrated by the merchants to justify the commercial warfare in which they were engaged. The launching of the Lakes Company was a commercial breakthrough after protracted negotiations over matters of navigation and customs between the British and the Portuguese Governments; but it encouraged fundamental obstacles which almost wrecked the Company by 1884. The trading and navigational monopoly along the Zambezi granted to the Portuguese mer­ chants, Anahory and Zagury, was broken up in 1878, and Morier, the British Minister in Lisbon, had succeeded in securing for the Company a substantial reduction of the Zambezi transit duty from the standard 30 per cent to 3 per cent; but the financially weak Company failed to establish deep and lasting commercial relations with the Africans. With its pitifully small capital of £20 000 the Lakes Company, working under pressing cir­ cumstances of competition with the centuries-old Arab commerce, lacked adequate money and men, a weakness responsible for the Company’s trans­ formation from a trading concern to a para-military force to displace the

>3 Great Britain, Correspondence with British Ministers and Agents . . . Relating to the Slave Trade . . . 1868, 804, Churchill to Seer. Bombay Govt. 4 Mar. 1868 (H.C. 1868-9, lvi, 729). >6 Ibid., 806, Churchill to Lord Stanley, F.O., 21 Aug. 1868. it R. W. Beachey, ‘The East African ivorv trade in the nineteenth century’, The Journal of African History (1967), VIII, 269-90. 1. C. LAMBA 19

Swahili. Nevertheless, in contrast to the Arabs, the Company had several advantages including the support of the British Government, a monopoly of missionary commerce, large capital investments by Arab or African standards and the use of a missionary vessel. However, in commercial terms, the Company’s operation proved disappointing, largely owing to British misconceptions of the local Afro-Arab commercial ties in Malawi. Events of the first five years led the Company into business measures of total folly, such as the attempted construction of expensive roads to Lake Tanganyika and Dar es Salaam which collapsed because of lack of funds and the death of European technicians.18 This, coupled with gross mis­ management, brought the Company to the verge of bankruptcy early in the 1880s. Its recourse to arms, as demonstrated in the Arab War at Karonga, was a total departure from its intended role; but this was the last desperate attempt to use whatever remained of its capital after nine years of un­ successful effort to eliminate its Afro-Arab commercial competitors.19 What came to be known as the Arab or Mlozi War, which marked the climax of this transformation into a military force, is an important area for further research to rectify the largely biased traditional British accounts of its origins.20 The war had far-reaching consequences upon the small British population in Malawi who initially welcomed it as a timely crusade against ‘Arab slavers’.*1 The Arab trade links with the Ngonde of Karonga were old;22 when the Company’s permanent agent, Low Monteith Fotheringham, arrived at the ivory-rich Karonga in 1884, the Swahili Arabs from Usenga under Mlozi

ib The Stevenson Road was abandoned after only forty miles of construction from Karonga. '» Only a commercial monopoly, with power to oblige the Africans to pay whatever the prices charged, would have enabled the African Lakes Company to prosper. An interesting comparison is the Royal Niger Company; see J. E. Flint, Sir George Goldie and the Making of Nigeria (London, Oxford Univ. Press, West African History Series, 1960). bo See for example, F. J. D. Lugard, The Rise of Our Eastern African Empire: Early Efforts in and Uganda (London, W. Blackwood, 2 vols, 1893),!, ch. 3-8; L. Monteith Fotheringham, Adventures in Nyasaland: A Two Years’ Struggle with Arab Slave Dealers in Central Africa (London, Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, 1891), ch. 3-19; Sir Harry H. Johnston, British Central Africa (London, Methuen, 1897), ch. 4; Johnston was more objective in his assessment than most British writers on the subject. Recent and useful research contributions to the topic are by H. W. Macmillan, ‘Notes on the origin of the Arab War’, in B. Pachai (ed.) Jsarly History of Malawi (London, Longman, 1972), 263-82 and “The Origins and Development of the African Lakes Company 1878-1908’ (Univ. of Edinburgh, unpubl. Ph.D. thesis, 1979), ch. 4-5 ; O. J. Kalinga, ‘The Ngonde Kingdom of Northern Malawi c. 1600-1895’ (Univ. of London, unpubl. Ph.D. thesis, 1974), ch.7, which throws new light on the intricate tribal balance of power operating in Ungonde. 2< W. P. Livingstone, Laws of Livingstoniu: A Narrative of Missionary Adventure and Achievement (London, Hodder Stoughton, 1922), ch. 17, ‘War with the Arab Slavers’. A general worry among the British was caused by the possibility of an interior Arab domination in the 1880s in response to the European scramble for Africa. 22 See Kalinga, ‘The Ngonde Kingdom’, 238-41. Also M. Wilson, ‘Reflections on the early history of North Malawi’, in Pachai, Early History of Malawi, 136-48 ; M. Wright and P. Lary, ‘Swahili settlements in North and Malawi’, African Historical Studies, (1971), IV, 547-74. 2 0 COMMERCE AS AN ANTI-SLAVERY DEVICE had in fact already been given land for settlement by the Ngonde ruler, the Kyungu. The chief’s gesture undoubtedly demonstrated the depth of African confidence in the Swahili Arabs and presented a threat to the Company which sought to destroy Arab popularity and commercial power. On the other hand the Swahili Arabs were not necessarily anti-British at this time. They treated European traders in the same way as their African allies and sought collaboration where it was mutually beneficial. In fact, despite their anti-slavery policy, the British in the Nyasa-Tanganyika corridor occasionally fraternized with the Arabs. The co-existence of the two groups at Ujiji where the London Missionary Society operated lends support to the point, and this state of relations went on until the later 1880s. At Karonga itself a vigorous Anglo-Arab trade in ivory and gunpowder*3 flourished even after 1883. But as the Company faced bankruptcy it came to believe more strongly that the elimination of the Swahili Arabs and their collaborators was essential to its continued operation. As a missionary-dominated company, it found it easy enough to refurbish the Arab slaver image under the banner of humanitarianism as a convenient pretext for war to ensure its survival and to detach the Ngonde from their Arab alliance in order to monopolize the Ngonde trade. The causes of the war have been explained in part as Arab aggression aimed at consolidation of political power inland after 1884 in response to German imperialism and callous treatment in East Africa; but such external factors had little, if any, bearing upon the situation at Karonga, which was determined by local factors, notably a precarious tribal balance of power that played into the hands of an incompetent but aggressive trading company. The Company’s injudicious involvement in local political relationships at Karonga led to its final adventure in alliance and war. Its local political grip, through Fotheringham’s and Nicoll’s treaties with the Ngonde chiefs, gave the local Africans legitimate hope of protection, not, paradoxically, against the Swahili Arabs, but against the Ngoni, Kanyoli’s Henga and the Ruga-ruga.24 The Henga had been welcomed by the Ngonde because of the depredations and harsh rule of the Ngoni in the Nkhamanga region in the south. Thus well received, the Henga settled in a strategic position in northern Karonga to form a buffer against enemies of the Ngonde, such as the Nyakusa and Ngoni, and represented an important factor in the poli­ tical stability and defence of the Ngonde. The situation changed with an alliance between the Henga and the Arabs which naturally imposed a strain on the formerly cordial relations between the Ngonde and the Arabs. 23*

23 J. Stewart, ‘Survey of the eastern coast of Lake Nyasa, and the latest news of the “Lake-junction Road” ’, Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society (1883), V, N.S., 689. 2* The Ruga-ruga were a band of mercenaries comprising numerous tribes, though dominated by the Nyamwezi, and serving, without political or tribal affiliation, anyone capable of sustaining them. 1. C. LAMBA 21

The position in Karonga became complicated by the advent of the Lakes Company which brought together the former enemies, the Ngonde and the Nyakusa, through paternalistic friendship with both of them. This situation was seen by the Henga as a betrayal by the Ngonde of their earlier friend­ ship with them. The Company had now set the stage for its involvement, direct or in­ direct, in local feuds. Any conflict between the Ngonde and the Nyakusa, or between them and the Swahili Arabs or Henga, would draw the Company to the aid of its allies. The Arab and Ngonde clashes which began on 27 October 1888 presented the awaited opportunity for the British to exercise their implied responsibility for defending their Ngonde allies. To the Com­ pany the war brought the chance to eliminate the Swahili Arabs, its major commercial rival, and secure a monopoly of trade with the African tribes. The Company’s high-handedness, diplomatic incompetence, hypocritical war aims and overestimation of its capability, however, turned the conflict into a war of attrition from which no single party emerged victorious. Only the diplomatic intervention of Harry Johnston, with his treaty with Mlozi of 22 December 1889,25 ended the war. The treaty, which had momentarily succeeded in redefining and settling Anglo-Arab-Ngonde relations,26 was greeted with severe criticism from the missionaries for its failure to evict the Arabs altogether from Karonga. The failure of the Company’s commercial imperialism was a blow to the religious imperialism of the missionaries. As Stewart had believed, the Africans were likely to become totally dependent upon the missionaries for their spiritual needs only after their material needs had been met. But Johnston’s action salvaged the Company at a time when defeat of the Arabs was a remote possibility. Estimated at £15 000, the war expenditure was in fact already in excess of the Company’s assets. The diver­ sion of the energy of the small, inefficient staff into the pursuit of the war halted all its normal trading activities. The Lakes Company, weak financially and lacking trading expertise, could not as yet meet the commercial competition of the Arabs whose local support continued unabated. After its own dismal failure in commercial domination, the amalgamation of the Lakes Company with the British Company on 29 April 1890 brought the era of purely ‘Christian commerce’ to an end; henceforth Cecil John Rhodes and Harry Johnston worked relentlessly for complete British control over Malawi, epitomized by the declaration of a British Protectorate over the country in 1891.

25 Details in Public Record Office, London, Foreign Office, Confidential Print, 403/127, H. H. Johnston to Foreign Office, ‘Report on the Nyasa-Tanganyika Expedi­ tion 1889-90.’ 26 The Ngonde now to return to their villages would not be molested by the Arabs or their allies who would no longer build north of the Rukuru River or south within three miles of the Tanganyika road. Either Kopa-kopa’s or Msalema’s village would be evacuated within a year. See Lugard, The Rise of Our Eastern African Empire, I, 160. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - Noncommercial - NoDerivs 3.0 License.

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Institute of Development Studies